Australian court upholds racial discrimination ruling against Pauline Hanson

Australian populist leader Pauline Hanson racially discriminated against a Muslim senator in a 2022 tweet by telling her to return to Pakistan, a court has said, upholding an earlier ruling.

The One Nation party leader had appealed a 2024 ruling that she had breached the racial discrimination act when she responded to a post by Senator Mehreen Faruqi with an "angry personal attack" that was "anti-Muslim".

Hanson had argued at the Federal Court that political communication should be protected but Justice Melissa Perry dismissed her appeal on Monday.

"Today's win is for every single person who has been made to feel that their belonging in this country is conditional," Faruqi said outside court.

"This case was always about holding to account racism and holding to account those who perpetrate racism," she added. "Hate speech is not free speech."

On the day of the death of Queen Elizabeth II in September 2022, Faruqi had offered condolences to those who mourned for the queen in a social media post. But, she added, "I cannot mourn the leader of a racist empire built on stolen lives, land and wealth of colonized people."

Hanson responded with a post that was "a variant of the slogan, 'go back to where you came from'", Judge Angus Stewart ruled in 2024. The phrase was "a racist trope with a long history", and "implicitly" targeted Muslims, he said.

He ordered Hanson to delete the tweet and pay Faruqi's legal costs.

Faruqi, the deputy leader of the Greens party, took Hanson to court after the tweet was posted, arguing it breached the racial discrimination act.

It was reasonably likely to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate another person or group of people and was done because of her race, colour or national or ethnic origin, she argued.

Hanson said she was "disappointed" with the decision and that she and her legal team would review it "with a view to commencing an appeal in the High Court of Australia".

Hanson has in the past advocated for a "Muslim ban" on immigration and earlier this year attracted criticism for an interview in which she suggested there were no "good" Muslims.

This month Hanson denied that she was advocating for a return of the "White Australia" policy - when from 1901 to the 1970s the nation banned non-white immigrants - in a podcast with British far-right activist Tommy Robinson.

In the podcast, Robinson asked Hanson how Australia had ended up with "Pakistanis, Somalis, all of these African problems with violent Africans?" to which Hanson responded that it began when "they opened up and got rid of the White Australian policy".

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